Based on a chilling true story from 1920s Hungary, emerging British screenwriter Bethan Moore has crafted a provocative black comedy-drama with her acclaimed script, *The Widow Making Syndicate*. Featured on The Brit List 2025—a prestigious ranking of the UK’s best unproduced projects—the script explores a remote village where a knitting circle begins systematically poisoning their abusive husbands with arsenic, leading to over 130 murders. The narrative centers on the trial of the group’s charismatic and complex ringleader, Zsofi Kovacs, blurring moral lines as it asks: can murder ever be justified? Moore, who spent part of her childhood in Hungary, was inspired by historical accounts of repeated mass poisonings by women in the region, using the project to connect with a „Hungarian female spirit.”
Moore, a graduate of the National Film and Television School, began writing the script amid personal anger over violence against women, citing the 2021 murder of Sarah Everard in the UK as a catalyst. She describes the tone as akin to Yorgos Lanthimos’s *The Favourite*—a historical parody that plays „fast and loose” with accuracy while rooted in real events. Her extensive research included original court transcripts and Hungarian academic texts, with some dialogue pulled verbatim from the historical record. The script delves into the absurd and misogynistic prejudices of the era, such as a court-summoned sexologist diagnosing the women with „sexual hysteria” because their husbands had been at war.
Ultimately, *The Widow Making Syndicate* is a exploration of desperation and moral ambiguity. Moore emphasizes that the story, sparked by the discovery of the deaths only during a local census, does not condone murder but instead interrogates the extreme actions of individuals in an isolated community with no recourse to justice. The film questions what drives systemic violence and the lengths to which people will go when left with no other options, all through the lens of a leader whose savior complex spirals into chaos. The project is currently seeking producers for development.
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Forrás: http://deadline.com/2025/11/bethan-moore-the-widow-making-syndicate-brit-list-1236605402/.